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This just in from Palestine Chronicle . Please support Palestine Chronicle financially, if possible.

\"They forced Yasser to take off all his clothes including his underwear.they ordered him to walk like a dog and then he burst into tears ..\"

By Suzanne Russ

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PC) - On Monday, November 25, Israeli soldiers ordered a young resident of the town of Nablus to strip completely naked in the street, according to Palestinian witnesses.

Yasser Sharar, 25, was caught violating the curfew in Nablus and was stopped by Israeli soldiers at gunpoint, who immediately ordered him to remove his clothes.

In an interview with Reuters, a witness explained, "They forced Yasser to take off all his clothes including his underwear.they ordered him to walk like a dog and then he burst into tears,"

The eyewitness who watched the scene from a few meters away continued, "He kept crying and was in a very stressful situation.many residents, including women watched him and he was very embarrassed."

Israeli soldiers refuted the claim, saying that they merely asked him to lift his shirt, but he voluntarily removed all his clothing to get media attention. The Reuters report also claimed that this is the first time Israeli soldiers have ordered Palestinians to completely strip naked publicly in a security operation.

However, recent interviews conducted by the Palestine Chronicle with scores of residents of the Jenin refugee camp contradicted the Reuters claim. Dozens of residents of the refugee camp claimed that during the Israeli invasion of April, 2002, it was a common practice to force residents to strip naked as a form of humiliation, or as the Israelis say, a "security operation."

Na'el Ammar, 43, is a resident of the Jenin refugee camp and explains how Israeli soldiers arrested and detained scores of men from the refugee camp, and forced many to strip naked, " We were mostly older people, sick and wounded. We had nine handicapped people with us, three were from the same family, sons of Abu Ibrahim. Some of us were too old, they were senile. When they told them "go left" they would go right, but they stripped them naked anyway. I tried to help them as much as I could. I was the only one who spoke Hebrew.Close to us was a group of young men. They were handcuffed, naked and lying on their stomachs. The Israeli tanks would pass by them so fast, only forty centimeters away from their heads."

Nawal Hawashin, a mother of eight, told Palestine Chronicle reporters that they threatened her 18 year old son with death if he did not follow their orders to strip naked, "They ordered my son and other young men to take off all their clothes and throw them on the ground. The soldiers warned that if the boys made any move, they would be shot. Near the Sahah, there was a body of a man with a white beard. He was lying dead on the ground, and tanks were rolling right over him. I couldn't recognize him. My son Mohammed said, "Mother, I am too ashamed to take my clothes off in front of women." I told him, 'Son, this is our fate."

Jamal Hussein has a family of thirteen. A man who worked as a cheap laborer in Israel before the invasion of Jenin described in detail how terrified Jenin residents were gathered in the center of the camp and forced to undress, "Soldiers stationed on the top of a nearby house started throwing dirt on us.. We remained 15 men and boys. Half an hour later a tank came and stood near us. They pointed the canon at us. And they spent over an hour terrifying us that way. The commander of that unit spoke in Arabic to us, "Go to Saha". While we were on our way, we kept reading Koran. We felt that they were going to execute us. Once we arrived there, we found a large number of men, forced to strip completely naked. There was a big pile of clothes. Soldiers started shooting right above our heads, they would call on us, one by one. Once they pointed at you, you would have to pull your pants down and your shirt up, when it was my turn, as I stood up, I noticed the body of a man, Jamal Sab!
bagh. It was some sort of a test. If you pass, you are arrested and if you don't, they'll shoot and kill you."

According to Jenin residents, Israeli forces were not discriminatory in their aggression, young men, old and disabled were targeted. 45-year old Um Siri lamented how her son was not only forced to strip naked, but how he was later used as a human shield, "Then they took my son, they had him strip naked, and they also started firing between his legs to terrorize him."

Israeli soldiers arrested and detained Um Siri's son for days, during this time, she did not know if he was dead or alive. Finally she found him in a rescue shelter where he recounted how he was treated, "When I also found my son, he told me that the soldiers took him to a field near the camp with many other young men, he told me that the soldiers had them walk in front of the tanks, as they were looking for fighters."

The vulnerable and elderly, according to residents, were treated just as mercilessly. Um Siri recounted how the women of Jenin tried to come to the aid of some men, forced to stand naked publicly, in the pouring rain, "We passed by the sons of Sheikh Abdel Salam. They were standing there in the rain, after the Israelis had them strip completely naked. There was a woman who came with us. She took her headscarf and tore it to several pieces and gave it to the young men to cover themselves. A very thin old man approached while screaming, 'My sons, my money, for God's sake, they took everything!' The Israelis had him strip naked like the day he was born. Once the women saw that, they started pulling their hair, hitting their heads, and wailing. He has all of his life's savings with him, because he was worried that he might lose it in the invasion, but when the Israelis stripped him naked, they found the money and took it."

Other residents described how young men were stripped naked and then shot. Yusuf Shalabi, a young man from the camp explained how the Israeli soldiers denied medical treatment to the wounded, ".I remember this nightmare very well. It is very difficult to talk about it. I remember them stripping the people naked, they would handcuff them and blindfold them. I remember seeing two wounded men, one was wounded in the shoulder and the other in the leg. They were screaming in pain and the soldiers would not allow them to be treated.

The Israeli army, who according to Amnesty International committed war crimes in Jenin in April of 2002, targeted medical workers as well. They also forced the women to remove their head scarves. Seham Shalabi, a young woman who works in a textile factory in Jenin recounted her memories of those days last April, "An army jeep came and started circling the house, then it opened fire at us. Why would they open fire at us? Then they came and they searched us, and had us walk two by two, out of the camp. Just as we began moving, we saw another group of tanks and bulldozers. We found some doctors and medical workers, forced strip naked, handcuffed. Then they put them in trucks and took them to the Salem detention center. The Israelis started shouting and ordering us to take off our head scarves.

Humiliation of medial workers was not only reported by the residents of Jenin, but these events were also narrated by the medical workers themselves. Mohammed Rafi' the director of the Red Crescent Society's youth development programs in Jenin recounted how the Israelis held medical workers hostage in the Jenin hospital for days, and then forced them to strip naked as well. "They did not allow anyone in or out. If one of us wanted to leave to the hospital across the street, it would take two hours of telephone calls and deliberation. Ambulance drivers would be forced to wait for two hours with people bleeding inside before they were allowed entry to the hospital, they would take our volunteers or drivers, have them stripped naked, and interrogated and insulted.

Of the scores upon scores of interviews conducted by Palestine Chronicle reporters in the Jenin refugee camp, that act of forcing civilians to strip naked was reported time and again. The Israeli army has defended the action, saying that such tactics are necessary to assure that Palestinians are not carrying explosives.

-(Many of the quotes within this article will be included the book titled Searching Jenin, edited by Ramzy Baroud, Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle. Searching Jenin will be available in bookstores in December 2002.)

I really like Webshots and highly recommend it. It is really FUN to visit Webshots every day and pick out new photos for our Desktop. The software is free and ingenious. Each day, an icon blinks on my toolbar alerting me that I can visit Webshots for more FREE photos for download. The program helps me manage all of the photos and I can even set the time that I would like to be notified. The kids love picking out new photos each day.

St. John Vianney, patron of priests wrote:Do you see, my children, except God, nothing is solid--nothing, nothing! If it is life, it passes away; if it is a fortune, it crumbles away; if it is health, it is destroyed; if it is reputation, it is attacked. We are scattered like the wind. . . . Everything is passing away full speed, everything is going to ruin. O God! O God! how much those are to be pitied, then, who set their hearts on all these things! They set their hearts on them because they love themselves too much; but they do not love themselves with a reasonable love-they love themselves with a love that seeks themselves and the world, that seeks creatures more than God. That is the reason why they are never satisfied, never quiet; they are always uneasy, always tormented, always upset. See, my children, the good Christian runs his course in this world mounted on a fine triumphal chariot; this chariot is borne by angels, and conducted by Our Lord Himself, while the poor sinner is harnessed to the chariot of this life, and the devil who drives it forces him to go on with great strokes of the whip.

A prayer for Bishop Francis and all priestsDear Saint John Vianney, your childhood dream was to be a Priest, to win souls for God. You endured years of toil and humiliation to attain the Priesthood. You became a Priest truly after God's own heart, outstanding in humulity and poverty; prayer and mortification. Totally devoted to the service of God's people. The Church has exalted you as model and patron saint of all Parish Priest, trusting that your example and prayers will help them to live up to the high dignity of their vocation to be faithful servants of God's people, to be perfect imitators of Christ the Savior Who came not to be served but to serve, to give His Life in ransom for many.
Pray that God may give to His Church today many more Priests after His own Heart. Pray for all the Priests under your patronage, that they may be worthy representatives of Christ the Good Shepherd. May they wholeheartedly devote themselves to prayer and penance; be examples of humility and poverty; shining modelss of holiness; tireless and powerful preachers of the Word of God; zealous dispensers of God's Grace in the Sacraments. May their loving devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist and to Mary His Mother be the Twin Fountains of fruitfulness for their ministry. Amen.

The Lighthouse has been updated!!!! Thanks to my 4.200 visitors (this year)!!!!! Special thanks to my loyal visitors who keep coming back. Believe it or not, I have added a few games to the site, mostly because I didn't know how to add games to a website and I wanted to learn how. (Please send any complaints to the game designers themselves.) I'm not sure what my future plans are for the site as my number ONE priority is my family ---- AND we are a homeschooling family, so the website is waaaaay on the back burner for me, folks, but I certainly do HOPE to have time to add more features soon. Keep checking back. As always, if you have any questions about the Catholic faith, please send me an email.

The Latest from PalestineOn November 16, Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State, issued this statement. It reads in part: "The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the shocking and reprehensible attack on Jewish worshipers on Friday. The fact that these worshipers and Israeli security personnel who came to their rescue were gunned down on the way back from Sabbath prayers only adds to the horror of this attack." Since then it has been revealed that Israeli officials lied about worshippers being killed on their way back from prayer. In fact, the 12 men killed were soldiers, border patrolmen or armed settlers. No unarmed civilians were killed or wounded.Call or email Secretary of State Powell and urge him to issue a clarification on two points:
1) Hebron is not in Israel. The city is recognized by the United States and the international community as being under an illegal Israeli military occupation. Secretary Powell himself has called on several occasions for an end to the occupation.

2) Israeli military officials have admitted that no unarmed civilian worshippers were killed or wounded. The 12 men killed and the 15 wounded were soldiers, border patrolmen or armed settlers.

3) Finally, encourage Secretary Powell to demonstrate that the United States places equal value on all human life. It is inappropriate for the United States to only condemn the deaths of Israeli civilians while remaining silent as Palestinian civilians are killed on a daily basis.In the past week alone, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian children: two-year-old Nafez Mashal; three-year-old Hamed al Masri; and nine-year-old Mohammad Abu al-Naja. Over the past four months, 80% of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers enforcing curfews in Palestinian cities have been children under the age of 16. (B'Tselem, Lethal Curfew)Send an email

Amiens Cathedral Project An AMAZING FIND! I really enjoyed this website about the Amiens Cathedral Project, Notre Dame Cathedral, Amiens, France. You can take a Quicktime tour through the cathedral, view photographs at different angles, read texts about the project, drawings which will awaken budding engineers to GREATNESS, perhaps, a discussion forum and more. If you love Catholic cathedrals of old, you must visit this site to see how the beauty of the cathedral can be brought in interactive form to a worldwide audience via the internet. Awesome. The computer graphics section may seem rather campy, but truly, these images give you a greater sense of the lines in the architecture which are sometimes unseen in conventional photographic images, so these are to be appreciated, as well.

Goldberg File, by Jonah Goldberg, NRO -- Morning in America: What’s next? I saw Tom Daschle on TV this morning. He had the same expression on his face my dog makes when he sees me scrape meat off my plate into the garbage instead of into his food bowl.

Real or fake, dog tags stir up emotions -- The American government says more GI dog tags are coming back from Vietnam, and most of them are fake, produced for unsuspecting tourists by entrepreneurs who recognize their emotional and monetary value.

Peace!Are you like me? Do you think maybe the Body of Christ might be getting a little too "down to earth?" From PR lessons to trade-union priests to giving alms with "strings attached," do you think maybe we're concentrating on the wrong "kingdom?"Join me at http://www.pewlady.com and see what you think!Have a great week,Kelly

Cursed is the deceitful man that hath in his flock a male, and making a vow offereth in sacrifice that which is feeble to the Lord: for I am a great King, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the Gentiles. And now, O ye priests, this commandment is to you. If you will not hear, and if you will not lay it to heart, to give glory to my name, saith the Lord of hosts: I will send poverty upon
you, and will curse your blessings, yea I will curse them, because you have not laid it to heart. But you have departed out of the way, and have caused many to stumble at the law: you have made void the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible, and base before all people, as you have not kept my ways, and have accepted persons in the law. Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why then doth every one of us despise his brother, violating the covenant of our fathers?

Responsorial Psalm

Ps 131:1, 2, 3

R. In you, Lord, I have found my peace.

Lord, my heart is not exalted:

nor are my eyes lofty.

Neither have I walked in great matters,

nor in wonderful things above me.

R. In you, Lord, I have found my peace.

If I was not humbly minded,

but exalted my soul:

As a child that is weaned is towards his mother,

so reward in my soul.

R. In you, Lord, I have found my peace.

Let Israel hope in the Lord,

from henceforth now and for ever.

R. In you, Lord, I have found my peace.

Reading II

1 Thes 2:7b-9, 13

Whereas we might have been burdensome to you, as the apostles of Christ: but we became little ones in the midst of you, as if a nurse should cherish her children: So desirous of you, we would gladly impart unto you not only the gospel of God but also our own souls: because you were become most dear unto us. For you remember, brethren, our labour and toil: working night and day, lest we should be chargeable to any of you, we preached among you the gospel of God. Therefore, we also give thanks to God without
ceasing: because, that when you had received of us the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God, who worketh in you that have believed.

Gospel

Mt 23:1-12

Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, Saying: The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not. For they say, and do not. For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens and lay them on men's shoulders: but with a finger of their own they will not move them. And all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues, And salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi. But be not you called Rabbi. For one is your master: and all you are brethren. And call none your father upon earth; for one is your father, who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, Christ. He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Commentary on the Sunday Readings by Lisa Graas

The readings of this Sunday are a lesson to us in humility and of thanksgiving to God for His faithfulness -- a reminder to us that without God we are nothing, but with God we are everything.

The priests in the reading from the book of Malachi were merely going through the motions of service to God. Their sacrifices were not pleasing because their offerings were blind and lame sheep rather than the best of the flock. It is clear that the hearts of the people were not turned to God because they did not see the necessity of honoring God. They placed God in the position of subservience to themselves by sharing with Him the weakest of the flock. They did not believe they needed Him, so the faithful relationship with Him became faithless and forgotten in their hearts. In going through the motions of their faith, they made void the contract. They willingly separated themselves from our faithful and loving God.

God's covenant is not a mere contract which was or can be renegotiated. It is an eternal promise. Because God is faithful, He will not violate His covenant with mankind, but He gives each of us the choice to make it void. God wills that we love Him because He loves us. Without this choice, we could not possibly love Him. We may choose to separate ourselves from His covenant or to participate
in it. Participation in the life that God wills for us requires our humility. Our humility is an act of giving -- an act of sacrifice -- and when we give of ourselves this pleasing sacrifice we receive back from Him the promised life. Those sacrifices made in our bodies, our minds and hearts, we bring with us to the altar. Without humility, full participation in a life with God is impossible because our sacrifices are meager and flawed, at best, like the blind and lame sheep. In pride, we hold back the best for ourselves and give to God the weakest portion.

We've learned from the examples of the saints that a life of humility is very difficult, but in today's Psalm we hear of the reward of humility. The reward in this life is the hope in our hearts that we will be fully united with God. This hope and its realization is the fullest happiness which we may attain in this life. If we live our lives in a state of forgetfulness about our relationship with God, we may have a false sense of happiness, but there will be an emptiness within us still -- hopelessness. In God alone is true hope and salvation. He responds to our faithfulness as the truest of spouses. He will never turn from us when our humble hearts seek Him. He is faithful to the covenant, so we have reason to hope in Him.

St. Paul risked his life to preach the Gospel to the Thessalonians. Eventually, he was martyred for his ministry. There is no greater act of humility than martyrdom. In martyrdom, one gives the utmost he has to give from his store -- his very life. Paul was not only humble before God, though. He was humble before those he ministered to, becoming a "little one" in their midst. It is not enough to stand in awe of the greatness of God. We must also be humble toward one another, no matter our station in life. If we do not practice humility toward others, we cannot truly be humble in the eyes of God.

Humility proceeds from the virtue of temperance because it is a willful act of refraining from disordered desires. In humility, we determine to see faults in ourselves that we do not see in others, or we seek out and find the good in others that we do not see in ourselves. Paul shows forth this humility of submissiveness most especially in his allusion to the matrimonial relationship we have with God and, therefore, to each other when he speaks of the desire to impart even his own soul, and not just the Gospel, to those he
ministered to. The term he uses for this desire has the meaning of "yearning" or "longing" as the spouse longs affectionately for her husband. This is the humility which comes from the love of a holy priest for his congregation and it is an example to us of the depth of humility we must have toward each other.

It is humility that Christ speaks of in the Gospel, and not only the humility of the priests but also of the laity. It can be difficult to show humility when we are in subjection to a priest if that priest has no humility or has fallen into some other great sin. Christ commanded that the people should do what the priests tell them to do because they sit on the "seat of Moses", a traditional term for the authority of the office. Christ is not abolishing the priesthood by saying that we should call no man "father". To the contrary, in our service to God, Christ commands that we are to be in a certain manner of subjection to the priests who have authority over us. He is teaching that it is in humility that we respect the office of the priest since his authority comes from God. When the priests do not live holy lives, however, we should not mimic them and we should not respect their sinful deeds in our hearts. We should do the will of God always, even when those in authority over us do not. It is not an act of humility to endorse or otherwise accept the sins of another. True humility is in seeing the good in others despite their sins, and seeing the sins in ourselves which others do not have. In a healthy understanding of humility, the distinction between good and evil remains clear.

Other Scriptures about pride and humility.

For thou wilt save the humble people; but wilt bring down the eyes of the proud.
(Psa 18:27)

The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart: and he will save the humble of spirit.
(Psa 34:18)

He hath had regard to the prayer of the humble: and he hath not despised their petition.
(Psa 102:17)

MEANWHILE, NARAL has declared a state of emergency with the loss of Sen. Wellstone. According to NARAL the Senate is on the verge of being won by a pro-life majority. I can hardly wait for election day so that I can go vote pro-life for everything from U.S. Senate to dogcatcher.